Under Her Boughs
by Sister Coyote
Summary: Farewell to the Wood. Fran, Mjrn, Jote. Backstory. Gen.


When Fran left, she did so quietly, and in the night, that no one would watch her go. In the curved wood-scented womb of the room in which they slept, she could hear Jote's deep calm breathing, could see the way Mjrn shifted in the grasp of her dreams, her feet flexing as if in motion, her ears turning to pursue sounds only she could hear. She made herself turn away without lingering.

_All viera of the Wood were kin, one way or another; the roots of the mothertrees interwove beneath the earth, and they drank of the same water and grew of the same soil and so it was likely that any of those who walked beneath Her boughs shared blood and flesh in some way. If one was much younger, she was called niece; much older, she was called aunt; alike in age, she was called cousin. But the bond of kinship was closest between those who had their birth from the same tree and were so called sisters, and closer still if the mothertree unfurled them close together: so it was a dear and precious thing when one mothertree fruited three daughters of the Wood, in close succession: solemn Jote, clear-eyed Fran, Mjrn, bright and quick as a stream in the sunlight._

_They were as close as ever sisters had been close._

She took nothing of the village with her, save the clothes on her back and the shoes on her feet, and those only to shield her from the whips of brambles and the knotted twists of roots. In the normal course of things, she could have moved so light and swift that such obstacles would melt before her: but she did not think the Wood would aid her in that now.

_"Come now," Jote said, "come now, run with me. Do not think, let your body speak to you."_

_"I shall stumble," Mjrn said, and though Fran did not voice it she had the same doubts. The deep fernbrake concealed rock and root, and smoothed the unevenness of the ground to one swath of green, softened and blurred by the morning mist._

_"If you listen to your body and not your mind, you will not," Jote said. "The Wood will speak to you through your muscles and your skin, and tell your body how to move." She gave Mjrn a look, sly, the kind of look she with her dignity only shared with her sisters: "Fran has done it. She outpaced a deer, running with the Mother's breath in her lungs."_

_Mjrn startled, her back going straight, unwilling (as Jote had no doubt known) to let Fran get the best of her. "Did you? Did you catch it?"_

_"No," Fran said. "I touched its flank, and it looked at me, and I let it leap away." She looked sideways, at Mjrn's bright eyes, and thought of the deer._

She went quietly, and without pausing, out from the tree and then from the village. She did not look at the hanging boughs that she had helped to hang with flowers for the spring festival, nor to the shrine where she had learned to offer praise to the Wood, nor to the singing fountain, nor to the sweet mossy banks where she had spent many an afternoon in quiet conversation; yet still as she passed each one (her eyes on the safe high crescent of the moon, which she was not leaving behind) her throat thickened, and though she had bound her heart against this moment, bound it as if with bands of hume steel, still it creaked and groaned. She went as quickly as she could without running, for despite it all she still had too much pride to flee, as if a refugee; she would go into her exile with dignity, as it was her own choice, her choice and her desire and her need.

_"Dance with me, sister," Mjrn said, catching her hands and pulling her into the circle. The air smelled of warmed earth, sweet with new foliage; it was one of the days in spring when it seemed that even the sunlight had a scent of its own. Around them, viera swayed and leapt and spun; aunts lifted their tiny nieces into the air so they could keep up with the circle-pattern. Mjrn held out her hands, palms toward Fran; Fran met them palm-to-palm, fingers-to-fingers, matching her movements and her steps until Jote stepped up to them and with mutual silent accord they each loosed a hand and held it out to her as well._

_But in the center of the spinning dance, palm to palm with her sisters, she looked around and saw suddenly that there was no way free of the circle; and her heart leapt with unnamed fear. Then just as quick the fear was gone: but the memory was not._

She meant to travel without pause until she left the wood, and yet her body betrayed her; her thirst grew until she had no choice but to stop by the side of one of the clear cold springs and drink, slowly and in small amounts so the chill would not cause her belly to cramp. She was not wholly surprised when she heard steps behind her, the scratch of claws on the earth and the faint rustle of ferns, and when she turned her head, there was Jote, tall and strong and terrible in the thin moonlight, and beside her Mjrn, her eyes full of fear, and of questions.

_"You were quiet, during the ritual," Mjrn said, dipping her wooden cup into the fountain for a drink. "I do not think the others noticed, but I was standing right beside you, and I do not think you were singing."_

_Fran said nothing for a time, drawing her legs up before her, but she could feel her ears betray her: tilting out, as though to hear anything but Mjrn's words, for gentle though they were she knew them to be an accusation. "No," she said. "I did not sing." She had tried—for the sake of appearance, if nothing else—and had sung the first verse of the christening-song for the newly-born child without hesitation: 'may you grow strong of will, clear of eye, swift of foot; may you grow in the embrace of your kin; may you be whole every day of your life.' But on the second verse her voice had stuck fast in her throat, and whatever her desire she could not sing 'may you breathe the breath of the Wood, and walk in Her ways; may you be Her voice and Her hands; may the Green Word be in your every thought and deed.'_

_"Are you well?" Mjrn asked._

_"I have the sickness of the throat; my voice would not come," Fran said, and it was the first lie she had spoken to a sister in all her adult life._

"Viera do not leave the Wood," Jote said, and each word she spoke was like a rock dropped into a calm pool. Fran had no reply for her.

Mjrn did not have Jote's severity, but instead had an anger that Fran knew was a mask for grief. "How could you?"

"I must hear my own voice," she said, and that stopped Mjrn, whose lips parted, mouth hanging softly open and eyes so sad that Fran wished to touch her hair as once she would have done, to soothe her. She did not. It would make things worse, not better.

"You are viera," Jote said. "You are our _sister_. You cannot—the Wood is your mother. It is your home. It is _you_."

Fran looked down into the water, and heard the voice of the Wood, low and whispering, constant background to her thoughts. "The viera may begin as part of the Wood," she said, "but it is not the only end that we may choose."

"There is no choice," Jote said. "You are of the Wood, or you are not viera." Mjrn made a strangled noise that sounded like a sob.

"If that is as it is, then that is as it must be," Fran said. "Goodbye, my sisters. I will not see you again, I think."

She did not dare look back; only forward, toward the edge of the forest, the lights of the hume settlements, her future.


End file.
